Dissent and censorship

Letters to the editor

Empire editorial: Is the Assembly the place to decide the community's conscience on patriotism?

On the subject of public dissent and censorship, two items in the paper quickly caught my eye.

One was publisher Don Smith's editorial that questions our right to openly demonstrate in a town meeting. He tells us such action has no place at local Assembly meetings and instead should rightly be taken to Washington for an airing. He says: "There are plenty of avenues for free speech, peaceful protest and effective activism for groups...." "But not here in my backyard" is his clear reference. Well, that's not the way it works, Don. Change first begins at home and then spreads to Washington, as we now see by yesterday's massive anti-war demonstrations held in major cities around the world, including Juneau. No, Don, I won't buy what your trying to sell us. Sorry.

The other item was coverage on the Juneau Arts Council's annual fund-raiser of wearable-arts fashion show. I noticed by its obvious exclusion that the second place award went to a work called "Eve," created by McGuiness and modeled by Bonnell. While color photos of the first and third place winners appeared on the front page of section C, nowhere was there a photo, color or black and white, of the second-place winner. Was this an unfortunate oversight by photographer Penn or just a case of prudent censorship of perhaps a questionable subject matter?

Alan R. Munro

Juneau

Yes, the subject matter was considered questionable. Second place was awarded to wearable art in the form of a vagina approximately 5 to 6 feet tall and 3 to 4 feet wide. - Steve Reed, Managing Editor